Discipline Priest Guide (3.3.5)

Post by ZoraLink

Discipline Priests: The basicsFirst things first: Guides love to start with a basic description of what you’re being guided on! So, to start with, what exactly is a discipline priest? The easiest way to boil it down is this:

-A mitigating healer! (There IS a difference, you know) Mitigation, the primary tool of a discipline priest, is best viewed as ‘temporary health’ a la Last Stand. Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis, the staples of a discipline priest, are each consumed before health is lost via mob damage. Note that they DO NOT stop environmental damage that is unavoidable, such as falling.

-They are the ONLY class in the game that effectively uses absorbs on a large scale. Though shielding (Absorbing) has been around for a long while now, it has only become very prevalent during Wrath of Lich King and many view it as mandatory to have discipline priest in 25 man raids.

-They are the most efficient magic dispeller in the game. Via the Focused Power talent, they are able to cast a Mass Dispel in under a half a second. Dispel magic, available to all priests, is also the most efficient magic dispel for single targets.

Discipline priests have struggled to find their niche in WotLK healing since the beginning (Originally intended as a tank healer, they simply couldn't keep up with paladins due to their Beacon of Light, and by Trial of the Crusader, lost their spot as a primary tank healer.), and seem to have finally found their comfortable spot in Icecrown Citadel.

In 10 mans, a discipline priest is best viewed as the glue that keeps the healing together. You're generally going to be grouped up with a holy paladin and then either a holy priest, a restoration shaman, or a restoration druid. Your goal is support both of these healers and, well, glue everything together. A disc priest is also highly capable of picking up one role or the other. Effective at tank healing through the sheer number of absorbs they pump out, they can pick up tank healing during Sindragosa's Unchained Magic for example, if the paladin is afflicted by the debuff. The same applies if your raid healer has the debuff. A disc priest can then pick up raid healing via Bubblespamming along with spot healing. In an ordinary fight with all 3 healers working together, a disc priest should maintain weakened soul on the tanks, along with being ready with penances on them if needed. During the offtime, they should be raid bubbling and spot healing.

In 25 mans, a discipline priest is a bubble bot. You'll spend the vast majority of your time maintaining as many shields on the raid as you can, preparing for any AoE damage that is incoming. Prioritize those afflicted by damaging debuffs such as Blood Queen Lana'Thel's Swarming Shadows. Note that while it appears mindless, avoid just smashing your shield button on anyone and everyone. A disc priest should be thinking of the larger picture, working to prevent critical raid damage such as Lady Deathwhisper's Frostbolt volley. Prioritize those low on health (Assuming no weakened soul debuff) and spot heal if absolutely needed. Penance is used more here on the raid, for quick saves. Maintaining shields on the tanks is important, but not as much of a necessity as in 10 mans.

Don't forget about your cooldowns! Power Infusion can easily be used at least 3 times most fights, and can make a big difference for the overall success of the raid. Pain Suppression is a great life saving cooldown, and while usually used on the tanks, has its situational uses for the raid as well.

Shielding is your friend. The biggest mistake a new discipline priest makes is to try to focus on healing, rather than mitigating. Once you've become comfortable with a fight, predict damage targets are going to take, rather than reacting and keep a shield up early.

For some ideas on what your personal tastes are: A build with Divine Fury is more focused on healing tanks, for the hard hitting heals. This generally happens more in 10 mans than in 25 mans at this point in the expansion. This is my second choice for a discipline priest build

The Renew build (My personal one) is more for those who prefer to be able to remain as effective on the move, when a Weakened Soul is up on the target they need to heal/protect. It’s best to cast the Renews during the Borrowed Time buff.

The Spell Warding build is for those who like the added survivability it offers. In the current tier of raiding, the vast majority of damage taken by the raid is spell damage, so a 10% reduction never hurts. Much more common in current ICC raiding._______________________________________________Glyphs: Welcome to the Land of Controversy.Glyphs can be difficult for new disc priests, particularly those slightly confused about what exactly their role is. The two glyphs that are mandatory for discipline priests are:

Glyph of Penance: Reducing the cooldown are the most powerful single target heal in the game? Yes please! However, penance will not be used as much in a 25 man raid setting, so take note that it is not always necessary to keep it on cooldown.

Glyph of Power Word: Shield: You’re going to be shielding a lot. Make the most effective use of it you can via this glyph. It can save lives if they’re low and a heal isn’t going to get to them in time, by both granting them the temporary health to survive the next hit and also enough real health.

The third glyph: A difficult choice.

For up and coming disc priests who have freshly hit 80, I recommend the Glyph of Flash Heal. Though discipline priests are a very mana efficient healer, you’ll want to ensure that you’re able to keep firing off heals as much as possible during your early growing stages, and Flash Heal is your go to heal when PW:S, Penance, and PoM are on cooldown.

Glyph of Prayer of Healing: This glyph increases your raid healing capabilities, particularly on “aura” style fights, such as Blood Queen Lana’Thel. However, Prayer of Healing is not frequently cast (If at all!) by discipline priests, so the strength of this glyph is uncertain. Once you’ve reached ICC tiers of gear, however, mana is no longer an issue, so the Glyph of Flash Heal is not needed.

-Glyph of Holy Nova:Holy Nova is also a very situational spell due to both its short range limitation and the party limitation. It is at its most effective during fights such as Rotface and Festergut (If you are placed within the group with melee members), along with other situational uses. More effective in 10 mans than 25s.

Post by ZoraLink

Gearing and Stat Prioritization:Again, a large gray area for disc priests. Once you begin healing, your primary stats are going to be:

Spell power > Intellect > Crit >=MP5 >= haste >= Spirit

To elaborate, the primary stat for a gearing up discipline priest is Spell Power. This is the only stat that has any noticeable effect on our shields, and these shields then reduce the value of haste via Borrowed Time.

-Crit while gearing is going to be more effective than haste as you’re going to be more worried about mana, and haste is actually detrimental to your mana in the long term, while crit offers a passive benefit with no side effects other than the RNG hating you.

10 man focuses more on the power of the individual healer. Through this, you will also be casting many more direct heals, rather than only bubbles. This makes both crit and haste much more valuable to you.

25 mans you’re generally going to be a bubble bot (And by generally, I mean 97.34% of the time). Spell power is the only stat that directly influences bubbles. Crit is more valuable than haste by a VERY small amount, only due to the increase from Divine Aegis bubbles on your Glyph of PW:S crits.

Both use the same longevity priority system. Note however, that it is up to the individual healer to find their balance of throughput and longevity; no one can do that for you. The goal is to end fights with as little mana as possible while maintaining maximum throughput.

In lieu of this, it seems only natural to jump into:

______________________________________

GemmingGemming is fairly simple and follows two mindsets:No bonus is a bad bonusGem only if the bonus is +7 spell power or more

For Gem +7 or bust, follow the above, if the the bonus is +7 or +9 spell power. If not, gem straight +23 spell power.Your meta gem should be the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. No other healing meta can compare**

**Note that at very high levels of gear, you'll have so much innate regeneration that the insightful, while overbudgeted, will no longer be necessary. At this point you'll want to switch to the Ember Skyflare Diamond. For a rising discipline priest, it's best not to worry about this as you probably won't reach this point until you're in ilvl 264+ gear.

________________________________________________________

Tips ‘N’ Tricks

-Power Infusion is wonderful in that it can boost a caster of any types’ capabilities. It is NOT recommended to use it on yourself, due to Borrowed Time. If you feel there will be no healing issues use it on either your top caster DPS or a mage who is close to top and is not under the effects of Arcane Power (Lightning shooting off him/her) or a boomkin during a lunar eclipse (Recognizable by a blue moon shining over his/her head.) If there is going to be difficult healing use it either on the holy priest/resto shaman for raid healing or a holy paladin for tank healing. Using it on a resto druid is not recommended due to their instant casts.

-Pain Suppression is wonderful. It’s a shield wall for anyone who doesn’t have a shield wall. It’s hard to explain precisely how to use it, though I’ll attempt to in my boss tips section. You’ll gradually grow to using this, though the best way to learn to use it is to have a tank yourself!

-During a 25 man, it’s best to save Penance for a quick save on someone who is about to die. You have to be quick though!

-The rapture trick: Essentially, you want to make sure your 12 second cooldown on the mana return on rapture is caused by as many shields popping simultaneously as you can. The best example that comes to mind is Icehowl’s stomp, in ToC. I do NOT recommend this trick for healing unless you’re absolutely gasping for mana. It will cause bad habits and gimp your own healing/mitigating. A link that better explains this is located here.

-LEARN TO IGNORE METERS COMPARED TO OTHER PLAYERS. This is for any healer, really. So long as you’re doing your job as best as you can (Or as close to it as you can) the only use for meters is to gauge your own improvement. To do so, look at all the healing done for the boss, look at what percentage of what you did, and look at your number of healers. Also, I recommend SKADA as a disc priest, as it has an option for absorbs + healing. ‘Normal’ healers who don’t understand disc priests will look down on you in disdain due to low appearance on the meters, but those who know how to raid will realize your importance. (If they use recount as compared to Skada). An alernative for Skada for judging absorbs is RecountGuessedAbsorbs which simply adds another tab to Recount that... well.... guesses absorbs!

-Don’t forget to focus. Inner Focus at least. Though 99.9% of disc priests spec into this, many forget to ever use it. Toss it together with Divine Hymn for some insane throughput increases.

-Mass Dispel! Make sure you get as many people as possible with this. Don’t forget it can remove magic effects that are normally undispellable! It can really help your raid a lot on Faction Champions and the deadly trash in the Blood Wing of ICC.

-ABSORBS ARE NOT CONSIDERED HEALING EFFECTS. This is HUGE if you take advantage of it. Mortal Strikes, healing debuffs, all those are silly. Shields aren’t affected! The inverse is true as well. For example, trinkets that proc off healing spells won’t work with shields.

-However, the Glyph of Power Word: Shield will give your shield the healing effect it needs to activate many trinkets and other effects. However, note that the glyph is generally considered a healing EFFECT, rather than a spell, causing it to have same strange compatibility issues.

-Combine your Shadowfiend with Hymn of Hope for massive mana regeneration. This is due to the Hymn increasing your maximum mana which your shadowfiend then restores more due to the increased overall mana, without losing this when the effect of Hymn of Hope ends. Note that it IS ok to cut off Hymn early as the primary purpose of it is for the 20% mana increase. Only cut it off if you need to begin immediate healing again, however.

Post by ZoraLink

As this is my first attempt at a guide, I love tips on how to improve it! I'm sure I've forgotten to include some things, or mistyped, or anything really. Feedback is appreciated! I'll be adding links later, around when I add the boss tips section. For now, I've gotta head out, but as I said, WTB feedback!

Reserved for boss tips.

Post by Aldones

Your meta gem should be the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. No other healing meta can compare.

And how, good sir, is Insightful Earthsiege Diamond better than Ember Skyflare Diamond? * More sp (our #1 stat...and really the only stat that we care much about) * At 1050 intellect, you receive the same amount of mana as Insightful...more intellect = more mana * Much easier to activate Skyflare (no sane disc priest will not have 3 red gems--hybrid gems count after all--but it could be acceptable to not have a yellow or blue gem.

Edit: I just noticed that later on in your post you mentioned that PW:S does not proc things for "on heal," but Glyph of PW:S will give your shield the "on heal" necessary.

Edit: I crossed out the first part of the post because I'm sick of people saying that I was wrong...ok, I made a mistake; it does happen from time to time.

Post by ZoraLink

Your meta gem should be the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. No other healing meta can compare.

And how, good sir, is Insightful Earthsiege Diamond better than Ember Skyflare Diamond? * More sp (our #1 stat...and really the only stat that we care much about) * At 1050 intellect, you receive the same amount of mana as Insightful...more intellect = more mana * Much easier to activate Skyflare (no sane disc priest will not have 3 red gems--hybrid gems count after all--but it could be acceptable to not have a yellow or blue gem.

Edit: I just noticed that later on in your post you mentioned that PW:S does not proc things for "on heal," but Glyph of PW:S will give your shield the "on heal" necessary.

The same amount of mana, yes, but not the same regen. It's a tricky slope healers have to traverse to maintain maximum effectiveness, and this is one part of it. The plus side of the Insightful is that it offers so much more in terms of actual effectiveness than other metas that it's better to work your other gems/gear around the insightful, rather than the other way around. With the insightful, you're able to swap out more things for more throughput, and the important part, this throughput should be more than the 25 SP and small crit increase from the ember.

For example, the insightful is roughly equal to the Purified Lunar Dust in terms of mana regen. Now, if you were using the ember, you would gain the 25 SP. However, you would be using the Purified to maintain the same mana regen as if you were using, say, Althor's Abacus plus the insightful. Althor's plus insightful is going to equal out to more eventual throughput.

That make sense? It's a weird concept to try to explain.

Also, I'll edit in about the Power Word: Shield glyph. The funny part about it is that it's very inconsistent so it's hard to say just what exactly it will be compatible with.

Post by Sinespe

IED is overbudgeted. This argument is very tired. If you're not using IED, you are either doing it wrong, are in full 277s, or are not doing challenging content. That's all there is to it.

Post by Dethog

Nice guide, will be pointing a few people towards it. All looks accurate and consice (concise in a good way).

The old one in the stickies was good in its day, but too out of date to be useful to new disc priests.

Report for stickies I say.

Post by Nakama

Thanks a bunch for this! I just got my Shadow/Disc priest to 80 and this will help out a ton!

--Jed

Post by ZoraLink

Glad it's already helped people! I've updated the second post with relevant links, I'll start my boss tips tomorrow, and then work on cleaning the whole guide up a bit as right now it seems slightly messy to me!

And I see grammar/spelling errors, and those make me sad :(

Post by hanswai

Thanks a lot, this guide has really confirmed that I'm doing the right thing as a disc priest :)

Post by Gnub

Glad it's already helped people! I've updated the second post with relevant links, I'll start my boss tips tomorrow, and then work on cleaning the whole guide up a bit as right now it seems slightly messy to me!

Sorry to be an ass here, but you better get started - because this thread is now in the Helpful Threads. Chop chop. :P

Post by kuinkitty

I'm not sure about of those few words, what are those... Rennn... Reeee... Re, re... Recrap? Hmm, what was the other... Gutter Hulz or something :o

Both are valuable abilities if they are not used.

Post by kuinkitty

And a post right after!

Your meta gem should be the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. No other healing meta can compare.

And how, good sir, is Insightful Earthsiege Diamond better than Ember Skyflare Diamond? * More sp (our #1 stat...and really the only stat that we care much about) * At 1050 intellect, you receive the same amount of mana as Insightful...more intellect = more mana * Much easier to activate Skyflare (no sane disc priest will not have 3 red gems--hybrid gems count after all--but it could be acceptable to not have a yellow or blue gem.

Edit: I just noticed that later on in your post you mentioned that PW:S does not proc things for "on heal," but Glyph of PW:S will give your shield the "on heal" necessary.

And how, good sir, you think you'd be taken seriously if you fail to know a simple thing: Best meta gem. Any rational disc-priest will pick IED over anything (even for PVP).

21intellect wich scales with Mental Strength

Then with Kings

Proc is worth more mana than your 2% intellect.

Hard to activate? I suggest you to stop using drugs. They are bad

For the end, I will throw some maths (c) Xiphias:

If you disregard the tooltip for the effect (2% and 300 mana) and click through to the actual data (5% and 600 mana) this gem is really great. If you assume 30 spells cast per minute (one every 2 seconds) which is quite low for some classes, this meta turns out to be 75 mp5

Post by DerrHans

I'm not sure about of those few words, what are those... Rennn... Reeee... Re, re... Recrap? Hmm, what was the other... Gutter Hulz or something :o

Both are valuable abilities if they are not used.

Im a dedicated 10man healer and i do use Renew and Greater heal. I Agree, im not casting Renew and GH that often as i used to since the ICC buff get ridiculously high (25%)

Often u can predict the damage incoming and when u shielded 10 man u basicly free to cast anything u want. A well timed greater heal in 10mans can do alot. It can crit for 21k or so thats a nice Divine Aegis (30% = 6.3k absorb). I got a reasonable amount of crit % and on festergut i use a GH just when he starts beating with 3stacks on the tank, Pre cast it hope for a crit and cast a PW:S right after it for some super duper absorbs. Pain Supression + Renew and some flash heals is enough to get the otherhealer bored as hell.

Sure 25man is alot different there we are just spamming bubbles and cast a Penance and a Flash heal when really needed.

So saying that these 2 skills are only valuable when not casting is not true for 10mans imo. 25mans i totally agree with u.

(im not specced in Divine Fury anymore due to the insane Absorbs of me shields, which gives a low enough cast time to cast GH with borrowed time without having to worry about the shield falling.)

Post by Paolo

Disc roles: Would be a good idea to speak briefly about this. Our role has changed from its original design as a tank healer. Because shields are by far our strongest spell (and they scale better with gear too), and because they're spammable, our most valuable contribution to a 25-man raid is typically, well, spamming shields. Boring but game-changing. (Toss in PoM on cooldown and you're now doing 90% of what a top disc priest does.)

In tens, we do it all. For tank healing, your stat priority changes (see below).

Stat priority: IMO, there isn't a single priority list. At the very least, it should be broken down into two separate motives: one for throughput, one for longevity:

Throughput: SP >>> Haste = Crit (*)Longevity: Int >> MP5 > Spirit

(*) The value of haste vs crit is discussed in this excellent post on PlusHeal. AFAIK, the value of haste is radically increased only for heroic LK; otherwise, it's basically splitting hairs in the haste vs crit debate.

Also, stat priority is somewhat different in 10s than in 25s. In 25s, you really only need spell power and (possibly) int. (Because SP is the only way to boost your shield size, and int will let you spam more of them.) You're capped on haste (see the PlusHeal link above), and crit is of minimal value. In 10s, because you're casting more spells with a cast time, haste and crit both have more value.

Recount: I hate Skada. Sorry, but even though it's got some nice info, IMO Recount provides a much more useful presentation of information, and I like its UI better. I don't say this to get into a useless debate, but to suggest you include a link to the essential addin for Recount users, RecountGuessedAbsorbs.

Build: The most popular build by far is the Spell Warding build. The amount of magic damage in ICC is extreme. And GH & Renew are largely (or totally) ignored by most disc priests. Obviously, with the zone buff escalating to absurd levels, 10% extra effective health is not needed the way it was before we got a 25% boost in our health from Wrynn. More on GH & Renew in a sec.

Glyphs: Penance & PWS are must-haves. The third glyph has much less value: Flash Heal (maybe for 10s), PoH (more throughput, but usually overheal), Holy Nova (not much value for raiding, but it's still my personal choice lol).

GH & Renew: If you take 5/5 Divine Fury, GH is a very viable spell. It's situational, and I won't go into the situations where it's useful or not. But you have a Huge Bomb you can drop when needed: Shield > Penance > GH. You won't be able to put out more single-target HPS any other way.

Renew... sorry man, it's just terribad for disc. Talenting it makes it less terribad. I use Renew the way you described (when on the run, while WS is already up on the target), but it's only useful when out of danger anyway. And that's what druids and holy priests are for.

Meta: IED is indeed the best meta, and by far. However, there may come a time when you're decked out in high-level gear, drenched in spirit (like our terribly itemized tier gear), and with hybrid trinkets like Solace and/or PLD. At that point you outgrow the need for the regen on IED. I didn't reach that point until I started getting some 277s, but other priests got there in 245s.

So at that point, Ember is your best option. Wasted regen is wasted. Ember is a crappy meta, but it's the best choice once you pass the regen threshold.

Post by ZoraLink

Glad it's already helped people! I've updated the second post with relevant links, I'll start my boss tips tomorrow, and then work on cleaning the whole guide up a bit as right now it seems slightly messy to me!

Sorry to be an ass here, but you better get started - because this thread is now in the Helpful Threads. Chop chop. :P

D: (Or should I say ":D"? Hmm....)

Rapture trick: Linkinated in 5.

Disc roles: Definately. I'll add that in. I briefly talk about it in pieces in a few sections, but a single section for it is a good idea.

Stat priority: Yep, I spent a long time debating what to do about describing stats. I'll break it into the two priority systems.

Recount: AMG NUB RECONT IS 4 TEH NUBZ!11! Naw, but really, I used Recount + Guessed Absorbs until about two weeks ago, I've just found Skada is slightly more accurate at gauging shielding. I'll add the Guessed Absorbs link in :)

Glyphs: I'l add in Holy Nova as a possibility of a third glyph but personally never find holy nova effective at all in raiding. And I stand by my decision to include renew! I've found it to be more effective than any others (For me, at least) for raiding throughput increases.

Meta: For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to leave IED as the recommended meta, as most disc priests are read this are (Probably) going to be leveling/new to 80. If there's enough of an uproar about it, I'll add in Ember to keep people happy :P

Interesting. Even if I try to put "To Paolo" or some such in the quote box, it always leaves it as Paolo. Odd. Anyway, making some changes to the guide, then I'll hopefully get around to working on boss tips.

Silly friends, wanting to be social when I haz srs guiedz

EDIT: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- I had written an entire section describing the disc role only to have my power dip out for a second, destroying it. GRAAFGABFASJKBNSJ.

(Please stand by.)

EDIT2: Remade the section, and broke down and added a note about the ESD.

Post by Gothri

I'm really not sure that Discipline Priests need a guide for PvE (PvP is a different story). I guess there are always people for whom help with the very basics is needed. But, really ...

As it is in WotLK, Discipline is pretty gear independent, so you can have your discussions about BiS items but at the end of the day a Discipline priest in gear optimized for a Holy priest will be effective.

You can have your min/max'ing discussions about Haste and Crit. But the reality is that the Discipline and Holy trees provide a Discipline priest with a lot of both of these. Furthermore, Discipline talents provide a lot of situational haste (and many Discipline spells are instants) so that stacking haste doesn't provide anywhere near the linear benefit like it does for Resto shamans. And crit, well ... "what you get on gear is enough", "never gem for crit", "crit has diminishing returns" ... enough said. I am unaware of another class for which gearing up has fewer pitfalls or less complexity.

As for playing a Disc priest .. well, really ... does this need a guide? In 25 man raids, the raison d'etre for Discipline is shield spamming. It isn't like you're going to be doing a lot of anything else. It is true that a Discipline priest has as many buttons to push as a Holy priest does .. but let's not kid ourselves. In high-ish end raiding at end game, a Discipline priest is there to spam shields. Throw out some Penances and some PoH's to pad your Recount list of effects, but these are not abilities anybody needs you there for. Prayer of Mending? Yes, good spell ... good spell. Cast it by all means.

Disc abilities are a bit like the U.S. Federal Budget. The importance and impact of PW:S is so large, that cutting back on other abilities or eliminating other effects makes very little difference in 25-man raids overall. Do we really need a guide to tell Disc priests to spam PW:S?

What I am looking for in Cataclysm is not changes that make Disc priests more potent.

I am looking for changes that make Discipline priests more interesting to play in PvE.

Post by OscarDivine

I'm really not sure that Discipline Priests need a guide for PvE (PvP is a different story). I guess there are always people for whom help with the very basics is needed. But, really ...

As it is in WotLK, Discipline is pretty gear independent, so you can have your discussions about BiS items but at the end of the day a Discipline priest in gear optimized for a Holy priest will be effective.

effective? yes. Optimal? no. Holy concentrates more on haste than SP for a reason. so... see below.

You can have your min/max'ing discussions about Haste and Crit. But the reality is that the Discipline and Holy trees provide a Discipline priest with a lot of both of these. Furthermore, Discipline talents provide a lot of situational haste (and many Discipline spells are instants) so that stacking haste doesn't provide anywhere near the linear benefit like it does for Resto shamans. And crit, well ... "what you get on gear is enough", "never gem for crit", "crit has diminishing returns" ... enough said. I am unaware of another class for which gearing up has fewer pitfalls or less complexity.

this may be true, but what the talent trees provide for disc is what holy priests actively gear for. Therefore: SP is king for disc re: gearing, but this guide is about more than just gearing. Believe it or not, there are a lot of players out there who are less experienced at playing priests than you and I and sometimes, they DO want the basics on everything, including gearing. This is the audience we're aiming at, not at those of us who are in our 4th or 5th year tenure of playing a priest.

As for playing a Disc priest .. well, really ... does this need a guide? In 25 man raids, the raison d'etre for Discipline is shield spamming. It isn't like you're going to be doing a lot of anything else. It is true that a Discipline priest has as many buttons to push as a Holy priest does .. but let's not kid ourselves. In high-ish end raiding at end game, a Discipline priest is there to spam shields. Throw out some Penances and some PoH's to pad your Recount list of effects, but these are not abilities anybody needs you there for. Prayer of Mending? Yes, good spell ... good spell. Cast it by all means.

Disc abilities are a bit like the U.S. Federal Budget. The importance and impact of PW:S is so large, that cutting back on other abilities or eliminating other effects makes very little difference in 25-man raids overall. Do we really need a guide to tell Disc priests to spam PW:S?

unfortunately, yes. Again, not all of the readership of this forum is experienced players like you and I. There could be a LOT of them out there who think that spamming flash heal and Renew around the raid is how to properly deal with incoming damage. Our audience with guides is not the most die-hard experienced priests.

What I am looking for in Cataclysm is not changes that make Disc priests more potent.

I am looking for changes that make Discipline priests more interesting to play in PvE.

I'm fairly certain we're getting it. However, I suspect that Holy improvements to both game play and role in raids might split the priest community into a more even distribution again, which I think is a good thing.

Post by Panik8

Do we really need a guide to tell Disc priests to spam PW:S?

Well, the thread is about Discipline Priests in general, not only "PW:S-spamming, ICC-Heroic-raiding Discipline Priests"... I think it's safe to assume that by the time people you talk about in your post get to the content you talk about in your post, they won't need this guide anymore.

We had an old Priest who just came back to the game and who felt like QQing his heart out on this forum about how new Priests are globally inept, nowadays and while his post was anything but constructive, the man still had a point. This guide is perfect for anyone who is leveling a new Priest or who just hit 80 and is wondering: "What now?".

Once one gets to the point where he has to go PW:S-spam ad nauseam, they should know everything in this guide like they wrote it themselves (imho). This guide wasn't written to "teach" you and I anything, but as a great reference to direct newcomers to when they come here for the first time without knowing where to begin with their questions.

My 2¢.

Post by Paolo

Any opportunity for me to whine is worth taking.

You're articulate as always, and basically reiterated everything that was written before. All you added were complaints that were out of place in this thread. L2renounce.

The legitmate argument against a disc guide is simply the lateness of the hour; Cata is around the corner, when everything will change.

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